Patent application of Alabama professor was rejected days before shootings

Just days before the shootings that took the lives of three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the U.S. Patent Office rejected the patent application of Amy Bishop, the suspect in the shootings.

In 2006, Ms. Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, applied for a patent on a "portable, self-contained incubation apparatus" for growing cell cultures. After more than three years of inactivity, the Patent Office finally began to examine the application late last year, and on February 4, eight days before the shootings, the Patent Office indicated that it was rejecting the application.

It is not clear if Ms. Bishop learned of the rejection before the shooting. The Patent Office did not mail the formal rejection papers until today, but the fact that the application was being rejected had already been posted on the Patent Office's Web site.   

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education reports that despite being denied tenure, Ms. Bishop "appeared to be enjoying and having some early success as an inventor" because a company, Prodigy Biosystems, had been formed to commercialize her incubator invention. But if Ms. Bishop learned that her patent application had been rejected, then her commercial venture may no longer have appeared to be a satisfactory alternative to a tenured professorship. 

It is common for the Patent Office to reject applications when they are first examined. Such rejections can sometimes be overcome after a course of negotiations or appeals with the Patent Office. But even if these transactions are successful, they can delay the issuance of a patent for months or even years. According to the Chronicle, officials at Prodigy Biosystems feared that delays at the Patent Office were already jeopardizing the venture's chance of success.

Comments

[JD Haynes]

You said, "...if Ms. Bishop learned that her patent application had been rejected [a few days before the shooting], then her commercial venture may no longer have appeared to be a satisfactory alternative to a tenured professorship." I agree and think that this generally overlooked possibility is highly likely and may have contributed to her despair and anger -- which then reached the point where she could no longer contain them. I am not justifying her disposition to violence, just trying to better understand what might have pushed her over the edge.
After quickly reading the incubator patent application, it appeared to me that the invention had little merit and the rejection could have been predicted. For example, temperature control seemed to be an after-thought and totally inadequate – uniformity was not even addressed. Similarly, the complicated structural design of the culture chamber would contribute to problems with bacterial contamination. Before the application was rejected they had more hope of continued funding from investors. From looking at the various descriptions and photos of the incubators, which got bigger as time went on, it appears to me that they may not yet have produced a satisfactory working prototype. Their optimism about bringing it to market in 2009 or 2010 may have been flagging regardless of the status of the patent. Even if the company was making progress in solving some of the problems that appeared not to have been adequately addressed in the patent application, that might have diminished the part played by the patent (even before it was rejected). If they are successful in bring a small automated culture system to market, it is not clear who would use it for what.
Background:
I work with cell cultures, but not in neurosciences where this type of automated culture system might be more useful. I have tried using small automated culture chambers. Implementation is not simple. Bacterial contamination and lack of temperature uniformity are two problems that I have encountered.
On the other hand, Petri dishes and culture flasks are simple and effective. Yes, you need a big incubator, but you can put many cultures in the big incubator, and it is simple. Yes, you have to take the cultures out of the incubator to change the media by hand, but there are portable warmers to keep the temperature relatively constant. With proper technique we rarely get contaminated cultures.

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